Why the future didn’t happen

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

This is a very good essay on how civilizations, from Rome up to our present moment, betray themselves. All human societies seem to be manic depressive, where their periods of vigor and then their periods of despondency. They amaze for a little while with their progress, and then amaze for a great long while with their collapse.

The past century, so recently closed, is rich with examples, both poignant and tragic, of technological possibilities not realized. On 1 September 1939, a decision was (in effect) taken by our species to spend five trillion dollars[1] and expend ~72 million human lives. This decision was followed in 1947, and repeated at intervals until 1991, to expend an additional ~12 trillion dollars, and perhaps another 1-2 million human lives. These ventures are known today as World War II, and the Cold War[2], respectively. In the midst of the first of these costly escapades, on 15 March, 1944, the architect of the German V-2 rocket, Wernher von Braun, was arrested by the Gestapo on charges of high treason for having privately expressed regret, after dinner at a colleague’s home one evening the previous October, that he and his team were not working on a spaceship, and that von Braun felt the war was not going well.

In fact, von Braun was engaged in designing and building the V-2, and much more sophisticated rockets, solely because he wanted to achieve the exploration of space; both personally and for the human species.11 Throughout the war he had spent what little free time he had laying out the technological basis for a systematic program to reach and colonize the moon and Mars. In 1948, von Braun laid out these detailed specifications and they were subsequently published in his book Das Mars Projekt (The Mars Project),12 in 1952-3. Forty-two million Americans saw beautifully illustrated and highly detailed explanations of this plan on television on the Walt Disney Show, and many millions more saw the same plans in print in Collier’s magazine, beginning in February 1952 and continuing through March of 1954.

Von Braun’s proposals also received wide circulation outside the US in a broad range of Western media, and notably, there were no serious scientific or engineering criticisms of the proposals. In hindsight, it seems clear that if humanity had decided in 1939 to colonize space, instead of expending ~$17 trillion and ~74 million human lives on war and destruction, we would have reached the moon in a robust and durable way by no later than the mid-1950s, and would now have well established, and very likely self-sustaining outposts on the moon and Mars. We would thus now be in the position of having substantial insurance against both technological collapse and the possible extinction of civilization (if not the species itself).

The technology required to credibly begin this effort existed in 1939, and the cost in dollars (and certainly in human lives) for its realization would have been vastly lower than those that were suffered prosecuting WWII and the Cold War.

And yet, none of these things happened. It is, of course, possible to speculate endlessly in this manner, asking, “what if,” in countless situations where a technology was developed and not exploited, or was not developed when it easily could have been. It has been argued that our position in the opening decade of the 21st Century is unique: that having let the technological genie out of the lamp by discovering the scientific method and developing the printing press and mass production, we are now assured of relentless progress towards human suspended animation, practical biological immortality, and a mature and highly capable nanotechnology.

Perhaps this is the case. However, the examples of our past, particularly of our recent past – of chance and choice frustrating our expectations of technological advance – should instruct us that inevitable does necessarily mean immediate or even foreseeable, advance. Fifty-seven years later, we are still waiting for our tickets to the moon and Mars.